On public projects

Why are US corporations not investing in the US? Are we investing enough, or are we investing abroad? We started to be intrigued by this a few years ago, when we started looking at the numbers and at everybody’s focus on the income of the average American, the employment opportunities, and so on.

It seemed like the question mattered more and more as we got into the 2016 election and afterwards, when we start talking about whether the government should replace the private sector [in funding public infrastructure projects]. Maybe we should do public investment instead? That was the trigger for us to think more deeply about the reasons why the private sector was not investing.

Is it because they don’t want to, or because they can’t? That’s the central question when you think about policies. Should the government take over and do public infrastructure because that’s really going to trigger the private sector? Investments are going to follow it, pretty much like the rationale of the highway system of the 1950s or the 1960s, or the technology boom after the 1970s and the 1980s.

Is this really a good reason to spend a lot of money on public infrastructure? Or maybe not.

Maybe the reason we don’t see this is because the private sector collectively is coming round to the conclusion that the 21st century is just a different economy where we just don’t need these kinds of heavy assets or those capital-intensive technologies.